Simian, violent, and thuggish: the Irishman as subject of political cartoons is an oft-traversed path in the historiography of American immigration. A regular fixture in periodicals such as Harper's Weekly, Puck, and Judge, the politicized, ape-like Irish Celt was a menace to respectable society. His jutting jaw, sloping forehead, and simous nose reflected middle-class distrust of Irish American political power in the years following the Civil War. Thomas Nast's "The Ignorant Vote: Honors Are Easy" is a case in point. Published in Harper's Weekly in Dec 1876, the cartoon's depiction of a black sharecropper and a brutish Paddy sifting on weighing scales expressed fear over the prospect of recently emancipated slaves and ignorant Irish immigrants holding the balance of power in American politics. By simianizing the Irish Catholic immigrant's features, artists such as Nast sought to undermine his political legitimacy. Here, Mcmahon examines three themes relating to transnational Irish understandings of race and nation.